Alexander Gorchilin captivates an audience of millions with his talent

Childhood and youth

Alexander Gorchilin was born on August 3, 1992 in Moscow. None of Alexander’s family - he was raised by his mother, grandmother, grandfather and stepfather - is in any way connected with theater or cinema. Nevertheless, the boy strove for the stage from an early age - in his own words, due to internal complexes. In an interview, the artist admitted that he could not communicate with people the way he would like, and on the stage of the theater “some magical things happen to him” - here everything is possible and there are no barriers.

Alexander began to learn the basics of acting as a young actor at the Children's Musical Theater. In the early 2000s, Gorchilin appeared in a Skittles commercial, and also received the role of the mute boy Sasha Grigoriev (as well as his friend Romashov) in the famous musical Nord-Ost (dir. Alexey Ivashchenko and Georgy Vasiliev). Also in 2006-2007, the teenager starred in several episodes of Jumble.

After graduating from school, Alexander entered the Moscow Art Theater School, where he became a student in the experimental acting and directing course of Kirill Serebrennikov and Evgenia Dobrovolskaya. The training took place according to Serebrennikov’s own methodology, the main task of which was to educate artists ready to work in the most unusual projects. Gorchilin and his classmates learned not only to perform dramatic roles, but also to sing, dance and even compose music.

Theater

In 2009, Kirill Serebrennikov gathered the Seventh Studio theater troupe from the best students of his course. In addition to Gorchilin, the troupe included Alexandra Revenko, Rinal Mukhametov, Philip Avdeev and other students. The studio played its first performances at the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art and on the New Stage of the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov, and in 2012 the group became a resident of the Gogol Center theater created by Serebrennikov. In addition to the productions of the Serebrennikov Theater, Alexander and his colleagues are also involved in the repertoire of the Moscow Drama Theater. Gogol.

Alexander Gorchilin on the stage of the Gogol Center

Among Gorchilin's roles at the Gogol Center are the Grave Digger in the production of Hamlet based on Shakespeare's tragedy (directed by David Bobet from France), Pixel in Serebrennikov's play The Idiots based on the scandalous film of the same name by Lars von Trier (play by Valery Pecheykin), artist Tutin in the play based on the works of the legendary master of the absurd Daniil Kharms “Kharms. Myr" (dir. Maxim Didenko).

Participation in Serebrennikov’s play “Who Lives Well in Rus'” based on the poem by Nikolai Nekrasov allowed Gorchilin to show himself for the first time as a film director. In 2014, the Gogol Center actors, led by a mentor, went on an expedition to the Yaroslavl region, where they studied the poem together with village residents and recorded unique monologues during their conversations. Alexander Gorchilin, together with cameraman Ksenia Sereda, recorded every second of this journey, and later released the documentary film “#COMUNARUSLIFEWELL”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkXCp0QgRs2

In the experimental (and this can be called, in principle, any production on stage “Gogol”), based on the works and letters of the great German playwright Heiner Müller, Gorchilin plays one of the two main roles - the Actor. His stage colleague Sati Spivakova plays the role of the Actress.

And the musical play “Iolanta / opus” became the directorial debut of Gorchilin and his fellow actors, Philip Avdeev and Igor Bychkov. In their production, the young directors used not only the music of Tchaikovsky, as the title suggests, but also the works of Schnittke, Poulenc and Puccini.

Alexander Gorchilin and Philip Avdeev

The play “(M)the Student” deserves special attention - a joint work of “Gogol-. The director of the play about a young man (performed by Nikita Kukushkin) who became a religious fanatic was Kirill Serebryanikov, and Gorchilin played in the production the disabled schoolboy Grigory Zaitsev - a loner who is bullied by everyone, a man who has found a friend for the first time in his life.

The performance received five nominations for the Golden Mask theater award and formed the basis of Serebrennikov’s film The Apprentice, released in 2016. Gorchilin played the same role of Grisha Zaitsev in the film, and for this work he was nominated for a Nika Award in the category “Best Supporting Actor”. But the main role, the fanatical Veniamin, was played by Pyotr Skvortsov, an actor at the Praktika theater.

The actor can also be seen in Philip Grigoryan’s play “Mayakovsky. Tragedy”, which concludes the “Star” cycle, dedicated to five major figures of Russian poetry of the twentieth century. The play premiered in January 2020, and the main role was played by Maxim Vitorgan. In addition, Gorchilin teaches at the Gogol School theater laboratory. Alexander admits that he always wanted to be a teacher rather than an actor.

Creativity[ | ]

Theater roles[ | ]

Theater Center on Dubrovka

• Sasha Grigoriev, Romashov - “Nord-Ost”, V. Kaverin “Two Captains” (dir. Alexey Ivashchenko and Georgy Vasiliev)

Center for Contemporary Art "Winzavod"

• Author - “Hero of Our Time”, M. Lermontov (dir. Kirill Serebrennikov)
• Lucifer - “Cain”, J. Byron (dir. Kirill Serebrennikov)
• “Red Line [metropolis poetry]” (dir. Zhenya Berkovich, Alexander Sazonov, Ilya Shagalov, Maxim Myshansky)

Gogol Center

• Positive - “Thugs”, Z. Prilepin and K. Serebrennikov (dir. Kirill Serebrennikov)
• “Fairies”, R. Chenault (dir. David Bobe)
• Banker - “The Hunting of the Snark”, L. Carroll (dir. Kirill Serebrennikov)
• Orpheus - “Metamorphoses”, Ovid and V. Pecheikin (dir. David Bobe and Kirill Serebrennikov)
• Welcome, Milyaga/Lion - “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, W. Shakespeare and V. Pecheykin (dir. Kirill Serebrennikov)
• Pixel - “Idiots”, L. f. Trier and V. Pecheykin (dir. Kirill Serebrennikov)
• Hensen - “Awakening of Spring”, F. Wedekind, S. Seiter and D. Sheik (dir. Kirill Serebrennikov and Alexey Frandetti)
• Gravedigger - “Hamlet”, W. Shakespeare (dir. David Bobe);
• Messenger - “Medea”, Euripides (dir. Vladislav Nastavshev)
• Grigory Zaitsev - “(M)student”, M. f. Mayenburg (dir. Kirill Serebrennikov)
• Vanya - “Little Hero”, V. Pecheykin (dir. Ilya Shagalov)
• Artist Tutin - “Kharms. Myr"
• Chick, Adam / Men - “Who Lives Well in Rus'”
• Man No. 3 – “Iolanta / opus”
• Orpheus - "Metamorphoses"
• Actor - "The Muller Machine"
• Policeman, Man without an Ear - “Mayakovsky. Tragedy"
• Alceste - "The Misanthrope"
• Sergey - “Idiots”

Theater "Praktika"

• man - “Constellations”

Movie roles[ | ]

Voiceover[ | ]

Film director[ | ]

• 2018 — Acid
• 2015 - #comunaruslivewell (documentary)
• 2015 — Russian fairy tales (short documentary)

Movie

Gorchilin first appeared on the set at the age of 14, starring in the comedy series “Three on Top.” On the set of the series, the guy met such experienced actors as Ilya Oleinikov and Tatyana Vasilyeva, as well as the young and still little-known actress Anastasia Zadorozhnaya.

The very next year, Alexander appeared in one of the main roles in the drama series “Atlantis” (STS), which tells about two families whose lives are changing dramatically. But real fame fell on Gorchilin after he was cast in the role of Zhenya Zakharov, the young man of athlete Zhenya Vasnetsova in the super-popular comedy series “Daddy’s Daughters” on STS. The hero of Alexander appeared from 4 to 7 (in 2008), and then in the 11th season of the series (in 2009). Gorchilin later admitted that he regretted this “mistake of youth” and that he participated in the “degradation of Russian television.”

Alexander Gorchilin in the series "Daddy's Daughters"

In parallel with filming the series, Gorchilin managed to play small roles in the melodrama “Twice in the Same River” (dir. Alexey Muradov) and in the second season of the adventure series “Sea Patrol” on Channel 1.

Immediately after graduating from the Moscow Art Theater, Alexander starred in the leading role in the melodrama by Valeria Gai Germanika “Yes and Yes.” In the film, the actor appeared in the role of an underground artist Antonin (Kolya), who has a complex relationship with a primary school teacher Sasha (Agniya Kuznetsova). The film was presented on the big screen in the summer of 2014 in a limited release and ran for only three days, receiving the most mixed reviews from critics.

2015 and 2020 were headlined by Sasha’s roles in the serial tragicomedy “City Birds”, the art-house film “Zoology” by Ivan Tverdovsky and the film by Kirill Serebrennikov “The Apprentice”. In addition, Gorchilin released a short film “Russian Fairy Tales”, in which he played the main role and acted as an editor.

In 2020, the actor could be seen in a cameo role in Roman Volobuev’s tragicomedy “Blockbuster” with Svetlana Ustinova and Anna Chipovskaya, and at the beginning of 2020, Margarita Mikhailova’s drama “Hit” was released on the big screen, in which Alexander also got a small role.

In June 2020, the film “Summer” by Kirill Serebrennikov was presented in Russian cinemas. movements of Leningrad in the 1980s. Gorchilin played a good-natured and cheeky punk in the film - the prototype of his hero was Andrei Panov (known as Pig), the vocalist of the punk band “Automatic Satisfactories”.

Alexander Gorchilin in the film “Summer”

Filming of the film “Summer” began in the summer of 2020 in St. Petersburg and continued until Serebrennikov was arrested and sent to Moscow on charges of fraud - an investigation was launched into the misuse of government subsidies allocated to the Seventh Studio back in early 2010s. Serebrennikov edited the film while under house arrest, on a computer without Internet access.

Gorchilin Alexander Pavlovich

Artist of the Gogol Center Theater.

Alexander Gorchilin was born on March 3, 1992 in Moscow. The boy grew up without a father; only his mother was involved in his upbringing. Since childhood, he attended the Children's Musical Theater of the Young Actor. He studied in the physics and mathematics class of school No. 649. Despite his inclination towards exact sciences, Sasha gravitated towards the theater.

In 2012, Alexander graduated from the acting department of the Moscow Art Theater School, the workshop “Seventh Studio” of Kirill Serebrennikov. During his studies, he was involved in the plays “Cain”, “Hero of Our Time”, “Red Line” and others. While studying, Sasha appears in a promotional video for Skittles chewing candies. During the same period, he performed on the stage of the Dubrovka Theater in the musicals “Nord-Ost” and “Two Captains”.

After graduation, in 2012, Alexander was accepted into the troupe of the Gogol Center theater under the direction of director Kirill Serebrenikov. The actor appeared on the theater stage as part of the acting troupe of Hamlet, Fairies and other performances. In 2020, his repertoire included the productions “Hamlet”, “Idiots”, “(M)Student”, “Kharms. Myr", "Who Lives Well in Rus'", "Iolanta/opus", "Machine Muller".

His career as a film actor begins in 2006. Then he played the role of Albert Anatolyevich in the comedy television series “Three on Top.” In 2007, he received the role of Zhenya Zakharov in the popular family television series “Daddy's Daughters.” Simultaneously with filming serial films, Gorchilin voices foreign, mainly American, musicals, TV series and films.

From 2009 to 2014, Alexander appeared in the role of Konstantin from Sea Patrol 2, and plays his son in the drama Teacher's Day. In 2014, Valeria Gai Germanika’s scandalous film entitled “Yes and Yes” was released, in which Alexander played his first leading role. The popularity of the young actor began to rise rapidly. In 2020, Gorchilin received the role of Grigory Zaitsev in the drama “The Apprentice” by his mentor, director Kirill Serebrenikov. Sasha played in the film a disabled teenager who has a hard time in society - his classmates bully him, and only the main character, the religious fanatic Veniamin, communicates with Gregory.

In 2020, Alexander took up directing. At the Omsk film festival "Movement" the audience was presented with the short film "Russian Fairy Tales", directed and edited by Gorchilin. In the same year, Alexander directed the documentary film “Who Lives Well in Rus',” dedicated to the preparation of the Gogol Center theater troupe for staging a play based on the play of the same name by Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov.

In 2020, Alexander Gorchilin was busy filming the crime comedy Blockbuster. The film is notable for the fact that it does not officially have an author. The director and screenwriter was Roman Volobuev, but in the credits he signed the pseudonym “Natasha Tyulpanova.” At the same time, the actor began working in the films “Ikaria” and “Hit”. As for his directorial activities, the dramatic film “Acid” is expected to be released in 2020, which tells the story of two young musicians’ search for self-awareness and the meaning of life.

Filmography

Filmography

Actor:

2018 - Ikaria (film), Philip. 2020 - Hit (film). 2020 — Blockbuster (film), uncredited. 2020 - 32 Young Guards (short film). 2020 - City birds / City birds (film). 2016 — Zoology (film), stylist. 2020 - Student (film), Grigory Zaitsev. 2020 — Russian fairy tales (short film). 2020 - Law of the Concrete Jungle (TV series), Ivan. 2020 - #COMUNARUSLIVE WELL (film), uncredited. 2014 - Skinless (film), entrant. 2014 - Yes and Yes (film), Antonin. 2013 - Elephant Sandbox (short film). 2012 - Teacher's Day (film), son. 2009 - Sea Patrol 2 (TV series), Kostya. 2007 - Twice in the Same River (film), Olezhka. 2007 - Atlantis (TV series), Maxim Andreev. 2007-2013 - Daddy's Daughters (TV series), Zhenya Zakharov. 2006-2007 - Three on Top (TV series), Albert Anatolyevich.

Actor - Dubbing:

2013 - Romeo and Juliet (film), Kodi Smit-McPhee - Benvolio. 2013 — Personnel / The Internship (film). 2009 - Wizards on Deck with Hannah Montana (video), Jason Earles - Jackson Stewart. 2009 - Hannah Montana: The Movie / Hannah Montana: The Movie (film), Jason Earles - Jackson. 2008 - High School Musical 3: Senior Year (film), Matt Prokop - Jimmie Zara. 2007-2015 - Phineas and Ferb (TV series), Thomas Sangster (2010), Vincent Martella (2010). 2006-2011 - Hannah Montana (TV series), Jason Earles. 2006 - High School Musical (TV).

Director:

2018 — Acid (film). 2020 — Russian fairy tales (short film). 2015 - #COMUNARUSLIVE WELL (film)

Editor:

2015 — Russian fairy tales (short film)

03.03.2018

Alexander Gorchilin now

In October 2020, the premiere of the drama “Acid” will take place, directed by Alexander Gorchilin. The film about the crazy life of young Moscow musicians who experience their first relationships, experience ups and downs, experience loneliness and search for themselves, stars Philip Avdeev, Alexander Kuznetsov, Arina Shevtsova and Alexandra Rebenok - almost the entire Gogol Center.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0w3qGipbO4

In June, Gorchilin already presented the film at Kinotavr, where his work was warmly received by critics, noting it with the “Best Debut” award. According to Alexander himself, the title of the film symbolizes, first of all, not drugs, but acid as a chemical reaction in relationships between people, as well as loneliness that corrodes the soul.

In 2020, the fantastic drama “Ikaria” by Yavor Gyrdev, the filming of which was completed back in 2020, will be released on the big screen. In addition to Gorchilin, Ivan Yankovsky, Maria Fomina, Pyotr Skvortsov, Irina Gorbacheva, Igor Mirkurbanov and other famous actors will appear in the film.

“Acids” to everyone: actor Alexander Gorchilin spoke about his directorial debut

How autobiographical are these characters?

They are a collection of observations about myself and my friends. This is not a self-centered story, but a collective one. Some time ago, I often hung out - I became interested in techno, met a group of young guys who had nothing to do with acting, and even became friends with them. I discovered that among them there are a lot of interesting people who are literally struggling: they are nobodies socially, they don’t understand themselves, they don’t know what they can offer to the world. And I realized that this is partly characteristic of me too - if the Gogol Center doesn’t exist, I won’t know what to do either. You can’t play in enterprises!..

The film is ironically dedicated to the “moms and dads” who raised the current generation of 20-year-olds amorphous and unadapted to life. Is it right to shift all responsibility onto them?

Yes, that's a given. We were raised by people who grew up in the Soviet Union, in a completely different environment. But the world around us has changed, which is why inconsistencies arose in our heads. We are not confident in ourselves, in life, or in the people around us. This is in our mentality - we are all a little enemies to each other until we prove otherwise. Plus, in Russia all initiatives are punishable, and people simply do not have the moral strength to show courage.

But I want to stand out. In the film, one character says to another: “Be interesting,” which sounds either like a reproach or a call.

More like banter. Be not yourself, think of something for yourself, hide. The hero Sasha is circumcised, and someone needs to have their nipple pierced or their hair dyed, as I did a couple of years ago. Due to a lack of personal qualities, people invent their own behavior or stupidly copy someone. But we’re okay - I don’t understand at all the generation that is behind us, the current 17-year-olds. They are crazy about YouTube and video blogs, with the help of which they sell themselves and their “interestingness”. Everything has become devalued for them, and they, like children of the metamodern era, are able to talk only about their loved ones.

Is your cinema still postmodern or already metamodern?

I tried to ask myself this question. Metamodernity has a purely entertaining, ironic function, but we still raise serious questions. Although, perhaps, the detachment in “Acid” is highly veiled and cannot be read at first glance. Remember “Love” by Gaspar Noe - not everyone understands that this is just a joke of an adult guy who clearly no longer experiences all these sexual impressions, but simply watches them with great tenderness.

By the way, some critics blame you for making the film from the position of an observer rather than a rebel. As if you were forty, not twenty-six years old.

Of course, everyone expected from the actor who drinks urine on camera and plays gays and punks that he would shoot in a stylish, fashionable, youthful way. We were well aware that provocations were expected from us, and we deliberately decided not to go down this path. Troubled teenagers, the horrors of the social lower classes—we didn’t care about that. I wanted to honestly talk about people who just p***** and do nothing. As for me personally, I am not going to serve anyone’s interests and satisfy the expectations of journalists who believed in me as a rebel. I, too, believed in Santa Claus until I was 14, and then a girl at school said that he didn’t exist. (Laughs.) I answered her: “Fool, maybe you don’t believe in God yet?” And then I found out that, most likely, there is no God...

What are your next plans?

Yes, none. If you want to know whether I want to continue making films, I don’t know. I don't have a goal to put creativity on the conveyor belt or to be successful.

It’s strange to hear this from a person who works in one of the most famous theaters in the country, makes films and travels to festivals.

The fact that a person visited Cannes or showed his film at Kinotavr means so nothing, you can’t even imagine! You remain intimidated and unsure of yourself. Sometimes I have nothing to pay for the apartment, and I understand that in the eyes of others I do not have the most successful image. But I don’t even want to talk about it - in our time, when there is only profanity around and every second YouTube star, I want to distance myself from the concept of popularity. Today it’s fashionable to be unsuccessful, it seems to me. Otherwise it turns out like with Monetochka.

What's wrong with her?

It’s clear to her that the people who go to her concerts have no idea what she’s singing about. That her creativity is being destroyed by these girls who take pictures of their reflection in their underwear and caption the post with her quote: “Climb into my heart, not into the fly of my jeans.” That her sincere hobby dies in front of an audience of men in suits munching on canapés. We debunk the myth around her image in the new video I'm filming. This whole story is about people being told: “This is fashionable, love it.” And they begin to love.